Neo-Confederate Judges? Who Knew?
Posted on | January 27, 2013 | 32 Comments
Why did Scott Lemieux reach for the “neo-Confederate” epithet (he clearly means it as such) to describe the three federal judges who ruled against President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board? I’m old enough to remember when liberals claimed to oppose the “imperial presidency,” but I suppose that was because Nixon was president back then. Liberals are OK with imperial authority when that authority is wielded by Barack Milhous Obama.
Lemieux may have gotten “neo-Confederate” from the Random Epithet Generator software that is installed on the laptops of progressive bloggers, to help them express their Manichean worldview.
It is not true that liberals are moral relativists. In their worldview, that which helps Democrats is good; that which helps Republicans is evil.
Because the appeals court ruled against the Democratic president, the court is evil, and the question for the Random Epithet Generator to solve is, “What kind of evil is this?” Racist? Sexist? Homophobic? Greedy? Reactionary? Climate change denialist? These possibilities were crunched through the algorithmic progression of the Random Epithet Generator and rejected in favor of “neo-Confederate.”
Does the word actually mean anything in this context? Go read Lemieux’s rant: He doesn’t even try to justify the term. It is mere name-calling.
But who cares about credibility, when you’ve already been denounced by Glenn Greenwald as ”a cesspool of unprincipled partisan hackdom”?

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